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From: jon@june.cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: The DoD Ada validation suite (interesting paper)
Keywords: Ada, validation, ACVC
Message-ID: <5630@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 2 Sep 88 15:53:42 GMT
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

> (Dale Worley writes) we keep finding differences between validated
> compilers.  ... we find that one or the other is deviating from the
> Reference Manual. ... This leads me to believe that the validation
> suite is pretty weak.

Limitations in the validation suite are candidly discussed in a very
informative paper by one of the people who built it:

John B. Goodenough. Ada compiler validation: an example of software testing
theory and practice.  In: A.N. Haberman and U. Montinari (Eds.), System
Development and Ada, Proceedings of the CRAI Workshop on Software Factories
and Ada, Capri Italy, May 26 - 30, 1986.  Lecture Notes in Computer Science
No. 275.  New York, Springer-Verlag 1986, pps. 195 - 232

Goodenough wrote:

"The test suite today (Version 1.8) represents 2400 programs. ... The test
suite is not yet complete.  We have identified approximately 1400 additional
tests that need to be written just to cover all aspects of the language
adequately."

- Jonathan Jacky, University of Washington